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For better or worse

I was actually one of those who believed that systemd was a good thing. These days I see a change that I am not so sure I like. systemd is basically becomming a "standard base system".
I am not sure if this is a good or bad thing, I am only hoping that it will be modular enough that people can replace parts of systemd with their own stuff without easily breaking compatibility.

I was actually one of those who believed that systemd was a good thing. These days I see a change that I am not so sure I like. systemd is basically becomming a "standard base system".
I am not sure if this is a good or bad thing, I am only hoping that it will be modular enough that people can replace parts of systemd with their own stuff without easily breaking compatibility.

Linux is in desperate need of a standard base system, its the glaring fragmentation (that also has upsides) that makes it quite difficult to develop for Linux, remember that if you are making a distro you don't have to use system d you use it so that you GET a base system and developers will be free to know that if they use this base system porting to other distros that subscribe to it are much simpler, the future in the systemd cosmos as i see it is that it will be the base for contained applications, and operating systems, you will be able to update your system separately from you apps, you will be able to run apps on any distro that has systemdNEXT on it (the dbus changes that are happening for and because of systemd will make this possible)

Don't like systemd? install gentoo, build linux from scratch, don't like those options? then you shouldn't complain when companies that don't want to deal with hundreds of different parts and choose a base system.
and when your done good luck convincing app developers that they should build their stuff for your little particular corner of just the way you like linux.

I dare say we are getting fscked by all these additions to the already not so slim systemd.

I really can't see the problem in OSS projects getting new features, sure, some can use "ed - the one true editor" for all their writing needs, but others prefer LibreOffice Writer, despite its size and despite it continues to grow and get new features for every release.

One major reason why important software projects continues to gain new features is that the world changes over time, and the way we do stuff, including what we do with computers changes too.

This last decade have seen a dramatic increase in "portable computing", media servers, virtualization of OS's and services etc. Linux needs to keep up with that or it will end up marginalized and obsolete like so many other OS's that didn't keep up.

The Linux kernel is developed at break neck speed, user space software too. But until systemd came around, much of the Linux plumbing system development had grinded to a halt, still pretending that it was 1996.

Take "cron"; there is no "cron" development team, no central upstream, but only fragmented forks of abandoned projects like Vixie-cron. So there is no central place to make RFE's, nor will a cron 2.0 be possible, since you may extend cron, but you can never change it since that will make it incompatible with other cron implementations. Instead you get bolted on additions like "at" and "anacron".

Same with SysVinit (and all its derivative versions): it could never change to adapt to new problems and solutions, since that would make it incompatible with SysVinit, and that was a no go.

Or the many limitations of syslog and loosely structured text logs; something e.g. the developers behind rsyslog have tried to change the last decade, but only partially succeeded with.

systemd broke that mold, and from now on, the "Linux plumbing system", will get the same development pace as the kernel and user space. Even if systemd will be replaced by something else in the far future, it will replaced by a project just as fast growing and dynamic as the present systemd project, so it can adapt to future problems and ways of doing computing. The days of stagnant "Linux plumbing" development are over permanently.

In short, rapid development and new features for ever release will be a fact for systemd forever, simply because the world and the way we use computers will continue to change all the time. Yeah, this is a change of how things used to be, but it is a good change.

Linux is in desperate need of a standard base system, its the glaring fragmentation (that also has upsides) that makes it quite difficult to develop for Linux, remember that if you are making a distro you don't have to use system d you use it so that you GET a base system and developers will be free to know that if they use this base system porting to other distros that subscribe to it are much simpler, the future in the systemd cosmos as i see it is that it will be the base for contained applications, and operating systems, you will be able to update your system separately from you apps, you will be able to run apps on any distro that has systemdNEXT on it (the dbus changes that are happening for and because of systemd will make this possible)